Portland’s second try at having taxpayers pay for political campaigns appears to be a go — without voters getting a say first.

The Portland City Council gave its blessing Wednesday to a system that would use public money to match private cash raised by candidates for city office who agree to limit fundraising and spending. In all, the system could cost as much as $2.4 million per election cycle.

As an antidote to Portland’s soaring housing prices, city leaders are considering a policy that would require private developers to include affordable homes in their new apartment buildings. But the promise of this policy, known as “inclusionary zoning,” is matched by its perils. If the mandate for affordability imposes too great a cost on homebuilding, fewer homes get built and the resulting slowdown in construction could aggravate the shortage of housing that is the root cause of Portland’s escalating prices.

For the first time, seaborne radiation from Japans Fukushima nuclear disaster has been detected on the West Coast of the United States.

Cesium-134, the so-called fingerprint of Fukushima, was measured in seawater samples taken from Tillamook Bay and Gold Beach in Oregon, researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution are reporting.

A proposed fuel break system in southwest Idaho, southeast Oregon and northern Nevada will limit the size of destructive rangeland wildfires and protect habitat for sage grouse, say officials with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.

If you’ve the Veterans Affairs call center in Portland and waited more than three minutes to have someone answer, you have lots of company. More than 12 percent of callers simply quit waiting and hang up, the VA’s own assessment indicates.

Call waiting is only one problem area for Oregon’s three VA hospitals, all of which fare poorly in the VA’s own rating system.

According to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, 1,800 Oregon children under the age of 18 become new daily smokers each year. And of the kids now under 18 and alive in Oregon, the campaign says, 68,000 will die prematurely from smoking.

Those statistics, which were updated by the campaign on Nov. 1, really hit me and they immediately made me think about the impact that I have personally felt from a decision that my mother made when she was in her teens.

For about 15 years, Tony Aceti has wanted to rezone his property, which is supposed to be used exclusively for farming. After several failed attempts, he passed a major hurdle needed to use the land for industrial development.

On Wednesday, the Deschutes County Commission made a recommendation to allow Aceti to zone his property to rural industrial, which means it can be used for things like manufacturing and storage. Before it can be rezoned, it must be voted on by the county commissioners, and go through an appeals process.

Bend renters living in units for more than a year could have more time to find a new place to live if they’re kicked out by landlords for no reason.

On Wednesday, the Bend City Council took the first step toward creating a law to increase the notice requirement for no-cause evictions to 90 days. Right now, landlords can evict month-to-month renters by giving them a 30-day notice but without giving a reason for kicking them out. That notice increases to 60 days if a tenant has lived in a unit for more than one year.

The union that represents more than 800 nurses at St. Charles Health System filed a charge Wednesday with the National Labor Relations Board alleging the health systems new flu mask policy violates federal labor law.

Since Dec. 1, a new St. Charles policy has required all employees who arent vaccinated for the flu virus to wear surgical masks throughout its hospitals, clinics and offices. More than 900 St. Charles employees 23 percent of its workers went without flu shots during last years flu season.

It should be a no-brainer. When a state agency hires a top-level administrator, it should use all the tools available to ensure it has the right person for the job. Yet the Oregon Health Authority failed to do just that when, in 2015, it hired James Raussen to oversee the Oregon Educators Benefit Board.

Emergency management experts are meeting on the Oregon coast this week to discuss tsunami preparedness.

The Oregon Office of Emergency Managements tsunami conference is bringing together a wide variety of experts to talk about how to mitigate the effects of a tsunami that would strike the coast after a Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake.

Smoke curling from a chimney makes for a serene winter tableau, but in that woodsy scent lurks dangerous gases and other toxins that damage human health.

Woodstoves are one of the primary causes of particulate matter in the air, said Rachel Sakata of the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. Particulate matter can be inhaled into the deepest part of the lungs and can cause respiratory disease, heart attacks and even premature death.

At least one student at Hedrick Middle School was sickened by bacterial meningitis, and a student at Hoover Elementary School may have been affected, too, according to Dr. Jim Shames, medical director for Jackson County Health & Human Services.

The students are siblings, and the student with the confirmed illness is under treatment and “in general, doing well,” Shames said.

Oregon’s implementation of testing and packaging rules have created significant problems for dispensaries and brands, as state agencies struggle to complete testing of products and the stringent rules make it increasingly difficult for brands to achieve full compliance in a timely manner.

A common question that comes up regularly during presentations is something along the lines of, Will there be enough jobs in the future? Theres not doubt that artificial intelligence and software are and will continue to impact the economy and employment. However, our offices position and forecast for the next decade is that yes, there will be enough jobs in Oregon.

-Commissioner Steve Novick sees his proposal through before leaving office.-

Portland today became the first city to impose a surcharge on companies that pay their CEOs 100 times what their median employees make.

City council approved the tax by a vote of three to one Wednesday. City Commissioner Steve Novick, who lost reelection in November, proposed the tax back in August when he faced a challenge from the left.

A 700-strong pool of part-time city employees are earning wages that barely pass federal poverty line standards. A Jan. 18 city work session has been called to address this ongoing issue.

Eugene City Council member Claire Syrett and former EWEB commissioner Bob Cassidy have been pushing the City Council for most of 2016 to hold a work session on raising the city’s minimum wage for these temporary workers.

-By pulling back on the Medicaid waiver, Oregon may be able to be assured that the reforms launched in 2012 can get approved before President Obama leaves office.-

The governors top healthcare policy advisor told a state panel Wednesday morning that the state may seek a straightforward renewal of its Medicaid waiver while President Obama was still in office, and pull back on more aggressive innovations to use medical dollars for social determinants of health.

The Oregon Board of Forestry has reversed its decision to deny a petition from conservation groups that called for the identification and protection of sites used by a threatened Pacific Northwest seabird, the marbled murrelet, on state and private forest lands.

There is not comparable property in all of Salem. The former North Campus of the Oregon State Hospital is a 47-acre parcel between D and State Streets, 23rd Street and Park Avenue. It is flat with no floodplain; it sits in a developed neighborhood within one mile of two full-service grocers and 1 miles of major Salem employers. The land boasts seven historic buildings and is about open ground, covered with numerous trees, many of them 130-150 years old.

A driver hit an Oregon transportation worker stopped on a highway shoulder for a rollover crash Sunday, troopers said.

Stephen Capps of the Oregon Department of Transportation suffered serious injuries in the crash, which happened on Oregon 35 south of Parkdale, the state police said in a news release. He’s expected to survive.

If anything is clear from the recent election, it’s that the public is increasingly distrustful of government, angry over big money in politics and convinced that the common interest takes a back seat to special interests with large wallets.

Here in Portland there’s an opportunity to fight these perceptions with a City Council vote to approve the Open and Accountable Elections reform.

Get ready for more affordable housing in Salem, a move that will help relieve a backlog of requests for cheaper living spaces in the city.

The city is buying Yaquina Hall on the Oregon State Hospital north campus from the state for more than $520,000, aiming to turn the historic building into dozens of housing units with less expensive rent about $600.

Surveys show a small but growing number of older adults are using marijuana a trend that worries researchers who say not enough information exists about how pot affects older users.

Abundant research has been done on how the drug impacts developing brains, but little is known about the potential consequences on older users even as recreation pot has been legalized in a number of states.

Gov. Kate Brown and Senate President Peter Courtney went before a gathering of the states business community this week and asked for support in finding more money to support Oregon’s struggling public services, notably education. Their audience understands that Oregon’s prosperity depends on good schools and a high quality of life. But if businesses are asked to shoulder more of the ever-rising cost of state government, they will expect something in return. Brown and Courtney’s remarks were disappointingly short of offers of reciprocity.

-Secretary of state’s audit found problems with data tracking, communication and planning at agency.-

Oregon Housing and Community Services has failed to provide adequate leadership in addressing the state’s housing crisis, according to an audit released Tuesday, Dec. 6, by the Secretary of State’s Office.

-Report says details safeguarding the public interest need to be ironed out-

The Oregon Department of State Lands said in a report Tuesday that if the sale of the Elliott State Forest is to go through, there are some details that need to be ironed out about how key conditions of the sale will be enforced.

-College and career readiness program helps students get to next level of their education and careers-

Sitting in the classroom of Arts and Technology High School counselor Sheri Erhardt, senior Lauren Levin works on an essay for a scholarship application. She shakes her head, struggling to think back to her freshman year of high school, when graduating in four years felt like a stretch, and attending college seemed impossible.

Slacker employers who waited and didn’t apply President Obama’s federal overtime expansion to their employees’ wages could be in the clear, as the expansion has hit a roadblock.

A federal judge in Texas ruled in two cases brought in by business groups and 21 states, issuing a preliminary injunction to stop the President’s overtime eligibility expansion, which was due to go into effect on Dec. 1.

After shuttering a Washington County National Guard armory nearly a year ago to clean up widespread lead contamination inside, military officials now say they’re ready to reopen the facility in January.

The Forest Grove armory closed 11 months ago after tests conducted in 2014 turned up high lead levels.

Amid a housing shortfall that political leaders say is a priority to address, Oregon’s lead state agency on affordable housing is falling short on its responsibility to help guide policymaking to reduce homelessness and keep residents in homes.

That’s according to Secretary of State Jeanne Atkins office, which released an audit Tuesday that described problems with Oregon Housing and Community Services, which handles state and federal subsidies and is the go-to agency for housing policy.

A Bend funeral home is in compliance again after cremating a little more than its state permit had allowed.

The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality hit Niswonger-Reynolds LLC with a $2,428 penalty after the firms Bend facility cremated more than the 20 tons allowed annually under a basic permit for air contaminant discharge.

Never underestimate the ability of Gov. Kate Brown to shift responsibility and misdirect.

At Mondays Oregon Leadership Summit, business and political leaders discussed Oregons budget shortfall and what might be done to close it.

It was a great opportunity for Brown to exhibit some of the leadership qualities for which so many people presumably voted for her. Did she do it? Not unless asking someone else to solve the states problems, even while refusing to acknowledge their causes, constitutes leadership. She did scapegoat, though.

Oregon’s small distilleries, including several in Central Oregon, weren’t happy with the prospect of privatized liquor sales when the issue came up earlier this year. They were concerned they’d lose shelf space guaranteed them by the states control over the sales of spirits.

Data centers that house YouTube videos and Gmail messages need power constantly. Google announced Tuesday that all of the energy it consumes globally including at its data center in The Dalles, Oregon will soon operate without directly relying on fossil fuels that contribute to climate change.

Until recently, many in Oregon’s disability community have had to live with a difficult choice: keep a personal bank account in excess of $2000, or enjoy access to government benefits like supplemental security income and Medicare. Michael Parker, Executive Director of Oregon 529 Savings Networks tells us about a new savings plan that allows Oregonians to save for disability expenses without losing state and federal benefits. We also hear from Kaaren Londahl, an adult self-advocate who testified before the legislature on behalf of ABLE, and Alicia DeLashmutt, who opened an ABLE account for her daughter.

Our new occasional series on the Death Penalty in Oregon begins with John Hummel, District Attorney for Deschutes County, who recently shared his thoughts publicly in a letter to the editor.

Q: I was more than a bit bummed that the Cole Rivers Hatchery folks chose to put all those big, nice trout in two of the most boring places to fish in Southern Oregon – Expo Pond and Reinhart Pond in Grants Pass.

A: We at Since You Asked Central may not be super-excited about fishing at Expo Pond in Central Point, F.F., but they are the only two public lakes or ponds on the Rogue Valley floor, and they are popular with the kiddos.

But that’s not why hatchery technicians chose those two water bodies for releasing their “show” fish from the hatchery’s public viewing ponds just before Thanksgiving _________________________________________

Federal officials are considering creating a fuel break system in southwest Idaho, southeast Oregon and northern Nevada to limit the size of destructive rangeland wildfires and protect habitat for sage grouse.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management announced Tuesday the 5,600-square-mile Tri-State Fuel Break Project proposed to create gaps in combustible vegetation along existing roads on public lands in the three states.

Oregon Tech is part of a multi-campus program awarded a five-year grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation, expected to be worth up to $15.6 million, according to a news release. The grant is administered by Portland States Transportation Research and Education Center, TREC, and is for transportation research, education and outreach.

The Oregon Department of Agriculture and the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife announced the opening of the ocean and bay recreational crab fishery along the southern Oregon coast from Floras Creek just north of Port Orford to the California border.

The ocean and bay recreational crab fishery also remains open along the northern coast from Tillamook Head to the mouth of the Columbia River, including the area inside the Columbia River mouth. Tillamook Head is located between Seaside and Cannon Beach.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has proposed a $62,924 administrative penalty against Martin Nygaard and Nygaard Land LLC for unlawfully filling undeveloped wetlands near the Astoria Regional Airport without a permit last year.

A coalition of nonprofit environmental organizations has asked some 150 taxing districts to consider opting out of Linn Countys $1.4 billion class action lawsuit against the Oregon Department of Forestry.

We were somewhat embarrassed to learn that the editorial page of the Gazette-Times opposed the creation of Linn-Benton Community College back in the mid-1960s.

The owner of the newspaper at the time believed that the sort of classes that would be taught at a mid-valley community college would best be handled by area high schools a prescient nod, perhaps, to the days a half-century later when those high schools would become important partners with LBCC. He thought the creation of a community college for the area would be a waste of money.

Inadequate data tracking, poor communication with employees and housing partners, and lack of strategic planning are putting the existing affordable housing inventory at risk, according to an audit of Oregon Housing and Community Services released by the Oregon Secretary of State today.

More than 83 percent of Oregon’s population is concentrated in the states eight metropolitan statistical areas. Rural cities and towns stand as islands of development surrounded by a sea of forest, farms, and rangeland. This distinct urban/ rural divide is in a large part due to Oregon’s strict land use planning laws, which encourage density in urban settings over suburban sprawl into rural communities.

Gov. Kate Brown on Monday pointedly challenged the state’s business community to come up with revenue proposals that she said are critical to staving off deep cuts in public services amid a $1.7 billion budget gap.

In highly personal and emotional terms, Oregon’s Senate president charged headlong into a central divide in state politics: He pointedly challenged business leaders to come up with revenue ideas that he deemed crucial to staving off deep cuts in the face of a $1.7 billion budget gap.

The Oregon Health Authority has approved guidelines to help reduce opioid use that include testing patients for drugs and monitoring marijuana use.

The recommendations call on providers to test patients they suspect of sharing, misusing or selling opioids. They encourage them to consult peers when prescribing high doses of opiates and to document and discuss marijuana use, including asking patients what they use, how much and why.

Citizens and policymakers should be wary whenever science is pointedly but selectively invoked to support a political agenda. A recent example is John Talberth’s Nov. 3 guest opinion opposing the “carbon neutrality” of forest biomass energy. His commentary neither clarifies the realities of forest biomass in Oregon nor does it consider the benefits of using forest biomass energy as part of a comprehensive strategy to address both climate change and the health of Oregon’s fire-prone forests.

Hundreds of armories across the country have been contaminated by lead dust, putting soldiers and the public in harm’s way.

The toxic material came from bullets fired inside armory gun ranges. The Defense Department and state National Guard officials knew about toxic armories for nearly two decades but moved slowly to address the problem. Many armories routinely host community events that bring in young children, whose developing bodies are the most vulnerable to lead.

As Congress considers its relationship with the incoming Donald Trump administration, U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden said he sees at least one natural spot for bipartisan action: a federal transportation package that could bring millions of dollars to Oregon.

“We understand you cannot have big league economic growth with little league infrastructure,” Wyden said Monday, cribbing one of the president-elect’s campaign phrases. “We have traffic jams and bottle necks in parts of Oregon where nobody could have dreamed of traffic jams.”

Doubling the size of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument is now a religious cause, according to the authors of a recent guest opinion in The Oregonian. Notably absent from their letter to President Obama and Interior Secretary Sally Jewell is a single signature from a faith leader anywhere near Southern Oregon. This is where the current monument is located, and where people and wildlife will be most affected by the proposed expansion.

On the heels of the presidential election, 33 hate incidents were reported in Oregon, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The law center recorded 867 hate incidents nationwide in the first 10 days after Donald Trump’s election, according to a report released by the law center titled “Ten Days After: Harassment and Intimidation in the Aftermath of the Election.”

Oregon’s tax system is heavily reliant on personal income taxes, and Gov. Kate Brown said she remains open to revenue reform. In her budget, released Thursday, she proposed $897 million in new revenue options. If you were going to reform the tax code and generate new revenue, how would you do it?

Recreational crabbing has reopened along part of the Oregon coast, while commercial crabbing remains closed due to high levels of domoic acid.

On Dec. 2 the state Department of Agriculture and Department of Fish and Wildlife announced the opening of ocean and bay recreational crabbing along the southern Oregon coast from Floras Creek just north of Port Orford to the California border.

Oregonians were mercifully presented with a relatively small number of ballot measures on Nov. 8. Nevertheless, three of those measures stand out as yet further examples of abuse of the initiative process by special interests.

Most of us know about Measure 97, the attempt to re-engineer the Oregon economy by imposing the largest tax increase in state history. The measure was rejected.

The Oregon Health Authority never conducted a basic internet search of candidates’ backgrounds for a top state benefits administrator job last year, instead hiring James Raussen, who’d been caught in an ethics violation while an Ohio lawmaker and who subsequently quit his Chicago city job after an investigation was launched into his office there.

-Business leaders focused on revenue reform and state spending as part of their 14th annual leadership summit.-

Emboldened by victory in defeating a corporate sales tax measure last month, business leaders at the Oregon Leadership Summit Monday offered state policymakers and public unions a bargain: They will support new taxes if lawmakers find ways to reduce the state’s pension costs.

The State Land Board which consists of the governor, secretary of state and treasurer is scheduled to meet Dec. 13 to consider selling the Elliott State Forest, an 82,500-acre parcel in Douglas and Coos counties.

Some of the Endangered Places are particularly beautiful. The Alvin T. Smith House in Forest Grove, for example, is the city’s oldest and dates to 1854: a blend of Classical Greek Revival style with the practicality of an old farmhouse. The Concord School in Oak Grove embodies Depression-era public works architecture, modest yet grand, rendering in brick a fusion of traditional and modern architectural forms.

Representatives from some of Oregon’s biggest businesses expressed a willingness Monday to consider tax increases to help fund state services. But in exchange, they said they want legislators to consider reforms that would slow the growth of government spending.

Gov. Kate Browns proposed budget pledges $20 million to Oregon State University-Cascades out of a campus request of $69.5 million.

There’s nothing final about the $20 million. The OSU branch campus may get more money or less. The governors recommendation is merely a starting point for budgetary discussions for the 2017 Legislature.

Bend city councilors are scheduled to vote Wednesday on an ordinance that would require landlords to give 90 days notice when ending a rental agreement with a tenant without giving a reason for doing so. Before going ahead, councilors should take a time-out and think about just what they hope to accomplish.

The harvest started early, at the end of a hot, dry August but slowed as orchard grounds turned muddy during rain-plagued October. Nut washing and drying machines finally shut down about three weeks into November.

Only one company put in a bid to purchase Elliott State Forest. Well talk to Lone Rock Resources and the Cow Creek Tribe about what they propose to do with the area. Well also hear from environmentalists who oppose the process the state has put in place to sell the forest.

The Vera Institute of Justices Allison Hastings and the Oregon Department of Corrections Liz Craig and Joe Etter join us to talk about efforts to reduce the use of solitary confinement in Oregon’s prisons.

The Register-Guards legislative reporter, Saul Hubbard, tells us about the 18-month-old Junction City psychiatric facility that’s on the governors chopping block and explains what would happen if it were closed.

University of Oregon professor Hector Tobar tells us about the role of bilingualism in public education.

Gov. Kate Brown, whose tenure was extended by two years in November’s election, must convene talks now among the key parties the unions, the business associations and leaders of both parties to address the shortfall legislators will face when they convene in January, and also work toward a more permanent solution.

Local law enforcement leaders are ready to fight an old budget battle keeping the state crime lab in Pendleton.

Gov. Kate Browns state budget looks to deal with a shortfall of $1.7 billion through a typical mix of higher taxes and fees and cuts, including eliminating 19 of 27 Oregon State Police drug enforcement detectives and closing the agency’s Forensic Services Division operation in Pendleton. The police chiefs of Pendleton and Hermiston said the moves would carry serious implications.

The Pendleton Convention Centers past as an Oregon National Guard armory has city officials thinking about its future.

The Oregonian published a story Friday about the high levels of lead dust in the states armory system, including the Pendleton Convention Center, which was converted from a National Guard facility in 1990.

The 10-mile ribbon of Highway 62 as it shoots through the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest between Prospect and Union Creek has the viewscapes that make tree-lovers and city-dwellers all wish they had moon roofs.

An ambitious thinning project designed to save centuries-old pine trees along Highway 62 has much to recommend it, and at least initially, it has the support of environmentalists who don’t always see eye to eye with the U.S. Forest Service. Let’s hope that support continues.

Local commissioners are drafting a letter in opposition to the potential removal of dams within the Columbia River Basin following their own frustrations with Klamath River dam removal.

During a liaison meeting Tuesday, Klamath County Commissioner Tom Mallams proposed sending a letter to the Bureau of Reclamation, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Bonneville Power Administration in general opposition to dam removal.

President Obama should heed the call to expand Cascades Siskiyou National Monument. Expansion would protect some significant old growth forests, portions of functioning streams, and enhance the biodiversity value of the existing monument.

It can be bought online and shipped to your doorstep, like shoes from Zappos, or a mystery novel from Amazon. Its cheap, just $40 for a gram. Nicknames: pink, U4. Potency: eight times more powerful than morphine. Death toll: at least 50, and counting.

Two recent casualties should be incentive enough to clamp down on the drugs availability, and the people who profit from it.

While there are differences over the scale of the plan to memorialize the World War II incarceration camp that housed nearly 20,000 Japanese-Americans near Tulelake, theres strong support for doing it. The project has been moving forward and deserves to continue.

Support was obvious in meetings last week in Klamath Falls and Tulelake, though feelings were expressed that the project needs to be more ambitious.

The Environmental Protection Agency on Friday said it plans to require mining companies to show they have the financial wherewithal to clean up their pollution so taxpayers aren’t stuck footing the bill.

The proposal follows a 2015 court order for the government to enforce a long-ignored provision in the 1980 federal Superfund law.

When we turn on the lights, TV or stereo, we rarely pause to wonder where the electricity comes from. Back in the day, all that concerned us in budgeting was whether income exceeded expense. If it did, we were happy.

But when we understand the threat posed by global warming and its consequences floods, drought, heat waves, dwindling snowpack, wildfires, we realize the need to consider more than just money. We now have to ask ourselves about the source of our energy, and the impact of its generation on greenhouse gas emissions.

Park Manager Ben Cox said recent heavy rains damaged temporary repairs made to the trail between Ecola Point and Indian Beach trail after a series of storms in December and early this year. The rains have caused additional sinking and sliding on Ecola Park Road and erosion around the Canyon Creek culvert.

That is a too-rare quality in today’s political climate, but it was more of the norm during Myers long tenure as a legislator, speaker of the Oregon House and attorney general. Myers, who died Tuesday at 77, will be remembered as one of the last of his breed, as well as a statesman in his own right.

For generations, The Oregon Way innovation and collaboration despite partisan differences governed state politics.

After decades of watching failed attempts to fix a broken system, West Coast fishermen now have a golden opportunity to push for a serious Columbia River salmon recovery plan. Federal agencies and dam operators will hold a public meeting in Astoria on Thursday to seek public input on a new approach and its crucial that they hear from the fishing community

Closing the North Coast Youth Correctional Facility is a bad idea in every way, but one that may prove hard to avoid in light of a coming $1.7 billion state budget shortfall for the next two-year funding cycle.

Although its residents aren’t there by choice having been sentenced for breaking the law it probably isn’t quite right to call it a youth prison. It is a form of energetic intervention by society to try to save youths whose lives are slipping off course. Young men between the ages of 14 and 25 get a chance to earn high school diplomas 30 last year and 15 so far this year while learning how to resist addiction behaviors and gang involvement.

Gov. Kate Brown calls her budget proposal “a short-term solution.” That’s been this state’s approach for far too long: patch the leaks just enough to limp through another biennium, but never address the underlying problems.

Southern Oregon University is proposing to add a graduate program in Outdoor Adventure Leadership, which would be one of the few across the country, especially in the West.

There’s a big gap for those pursuing a graduate degree,” said instructor Adam Elson, who has taught at the university for 12 years and has been instructing Outdoor Adventure Leadership for the past nine years.

The Oregon Trail Interpretive Center will be the new home of a book of historic pioneer maps thanks to Sen. Ron Wyden.

Through a partnership between the Library of Congress and the office of the Oregon Democrat, the 170-year-old, seven-section topographical map of the Oregon Trail that is bound into a book, has been secured for display at the Interpretive Center on Flagstaff Hill about five miles east of Baker City.

Between 20 and 50 percent of the streets and roads in many of our cities and counties are in poor or very poor condition. When asphalt reaches these conditions, it has to be replaced at a cost of about $200,000 to $300,000 per mile, twice what it would have cost had it been appropriately cared for.

The DeWitt Museum has been named one of Oregon’s most endangered places by Restore Oregon, a nonprofit committed to preserve historical sites.

The museum, once the old Sumpter Valley Railway Depot, has been preserved as a railroad museum and RV park. It houses a collection of items left from the railroad that once ran through the John Day Valley, as well as other artifacts from the past.

Two sworn rivals have teamed up to find a solution for saving a 102-year-old building in Union County. University of Oregon architecture students created designs for restoring what is known as the big red barn at the Oregon State University Experiment Station in Union during their fall term.

On Saturday, the designs were displayed at the station, and the community saw the first step in the possible restoration process.

As the end of the year approaches, wildlife biologists are gathering data on Oregons wolf population even as increased numbers complicate long-term management of the animals.

In Flora, Shamrock Pack sightings have become a regular occurrence. Mike Hansen, assistant wildlife biologist at the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife Enterprise office, said this week he investigated a report of wolves in and around a ranch house in northern Wallowa County.

Oregon’s business community on Monday at the Oregon Leadership Summit acknowledged the need for new taxes to fix the state’s budget “crisis,” but stopped short of offering specific proposals for the ailing revenue system.

The one-day event serves as the launch pad for the business community’s legislative agenda, known as the Oregon Business Plan, for the upcoming year.

The City Club of Portland’s Friday Forum this week addresses a controversial topic that has long divided Oregon.

Here’s how City Club described the event, which takes place at the Sentinel Hotel at noon: “In 1994, Oregon voters approved Measure 11, which established mandatory minimum prison sentences for serious crimes. This forum will bring together different perspectives to examine the measure’s impacts over the last 20 years and efforts to reform the policy.”

-Backers of Measure 98 says the governor’s not upholding the will of voters-

Gov. Kate Brown released her proposed budget for 2017-19 this week and swiftly met criticism from two vastly different interest groups.

Stand for Children, the education advocacy group that backed November’s Measure 98, says Brown’s budget proposal doesn’t follow the will of voters, who overwhelmingly approved the career- and technical-education measure aimed at boosting Oregon’s graduate rate. Brown’s proposed budget sets aside only $139.4 million of the estimated $247 million backers anticipated would fund the programs.

When the modern Tea Party movement coalesced in the early days of the Obama presidency, its allusion to the political grievances of the protesters in Boston Harbor a couple of hundred years earlier seemed plausible enough: Its members felt that their taxes were too high and their interests not adequately represented by the remote authorities in Washington.

On Oct. 27, a jolt of fear shot through federal employees across the West. A jury had just acquitted all seven defendants of charges filed over their armed takeover of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon. After enduring strangers parked in their neighborhoods, telephone and online threats during the 41-day occupation, government botanists, foresters and information officers braced for another onslaught of intimidation.

-The state agency has hired 862 more employees since 2013 and increased salaries on upper management by 18 percent, helping to drive a 29 percent overall increase in payroll.-

The Oregon Health Authority has increased spending on employee salaries by 29 percent since 2013, including an 18 percent increase on the salaries of upper management, even as it forecasts a hole of $1.1 billion for the 2017-2019 biennium.

Please contact the State Library of access to this premium story from the Lund Report. library.help@state.or.us , 503-378-8800

This is the first story in a new Lund Report series, which will examine the results of in-depth surveys among members of the states coordinated care organizations

Patients of Grants Pass-based AllCare Health, one of Oregon’s 16 Medicaid-funded coordinated care organizations, are demographically different: they are more likely to be men, less likely to hold a post-graduate degree, and whiter than CCO members as a whole, across the state.

Please contact the State Library of access to this premium story from the Lund Report. library.help@state.or.us , 503-378-8800

Patient charges for abdomen and pelvis CT scans at Oregon hospitals are as much as three times more than at imaging centers within the same region. Dramatic price differences are also found both between facility types and within the same location.

Shocked by the high price of a CT scan at St. Luke’s Hospital in Boise, a patient called around to local imaging centers and discovered that the rates were considerably less for the same procedure.

The Environmental Protection Agency has criticized as inadequate a draft study the Army Corps of Engineers did on a proposed coal-export project in Washington state.

The corps’ draft environmental review is flawed because it fails to take a hard look at potential environmental impacts, such as air quality, rail traffic and climate change, EPA wrote to the corps in a letter Tuesday.

Gov. Kate Brown’s recommended budget includes money for a new team of researchers to study underground water sources in Oregon.

If approved, the additional $1.8 million requested for the study means the state would effectively double its capacity to perform groundwater research, adding a second team of people to review the resource every five years.

Oregon Senate President Peter Courtney is a veteran politician with a passion for history. A year ago, the Democrat predicted that a brewing fight between business and public employee unions would become Oregon’s political Antietam, the Civil War’s bloodiest day.

Then, opposing campaigns — for what would become Measure 97 — unleashed more than $40 million in ads on television and social media. It became the biggest ballot measure fight in the history of the Pacific Northwest.

Oregon’s Department of State Lands says it plans to continue keeping boaters from squatting long term on state-owned waterways in 2017 after an administrative law judge recently ruled the agency can legally evict them and tow away their boats if they refuse to move.

Oregon on Friday issued temporary new rules aimed at easing what marijuana producers and processors say is a major backlog that has brought parts of the industry to a standstill, left store shelves empty and prompted some companies to lay off workers.

A troubled residential program allowed to remain open when an Oregon child welfare official reversed abuse and neglect findings this fall may have to close after all.

The Oregon Department of Human Services on Friday threatened the license of Eastern Oregon Academy, near Burns, over instances of sex abuse by a female staffer, the failure to report a youth who’d been left in the wilderness for two hours and poor supervision.

Agents from the Oregon Department of Justice and the FBI investigating an Oregon solar power project last September persuaded another player in the case to telephone Shain in hopes he would incriminate himself.

Southern Oregon’s Cascade-Siskiyou is an unlikely place to fight over a national monument. It is, after all, already a national monument.

But since ecologists recommended a massive 65,000-acre expansion – in effect doubling the size of the federal monument – Cascade-Siskiyou has quietly become an important battleground in the nationwide debate over federal lands.

Two separate fights to protect two extraordinary patches of Oregon have in recent months escalated as President Barack Obama’s term comes to a close. That’s because he could, by the authority Congress granted to him in a far less populous time, singularly issue sweeping protections to the Owyhee Canyonlands in southeastern Oregon and the Cascade-Siskiyou Mountains in southwestern Oregon and northern California.

The sheriff’s deputy in the passenger seat read a series of numbers aloud, and I punched them into my phone calculator with one hand on the steering wheel as I drove through the parking lot.

My rear tire crunched over a traffic cone, and I failed to brake at the basket of plastic balls thrown in front of the SUV. It was bad really bad. After a parallel parking nightmare, one of the deputies joked, “Well, you left one cone standing.”

A task force charged with finding ways to help the state protect Oregon’s fish and wildlife has come up with a couple of novel funding mechanisms that don’t automatically pass the cost on to hunters and anglers. The concept is sound given that hunters and fishing enthusiasts aren’t the only ones using the state’s lands and waters, and have been bearing the brunt of the cost for some time.

Processors and growers had complained that strict testing rules for medical and recreational marijuana imposed by the state on Oct. 1 had created a backlog at testing labs, which led to pot product shortages at dispensaries.

University of Oregon students may return to the bad old days of whopping tuition increases next year if the figures in the governors proposed state budget dont change.

Gov. Kate Brown plans to give the states public universities a flat $667 million for the next two-year budget cycle. If thats the final figure, tuition increases are likely to exceed 5 percent, according to discussion at the UO Board of Trustees meeting in Portland on Friday.

The statistics in a new report were bad enough: 21,340 students in Oregon public schools were homeless in the last school year; 1,929 pre-kindergarten students were homeless; 524 students about one out of every 10 in the Bethel School District were homeless, 900 students in the Eugene School District, about one in 20, were homeless; 480 students in the Springfield School District were homeless, also about one out of 20.

Like long snappers on football teams, state attorneys general don’t attract a lot of attention unless they make a big mistake.

Three-term Oregon Attorney General Hardy Myers, who died Tuesday at 77, didn’t attract a lot of attention for all the right reasons. He was a quiet and consistent enforcer of justice after a similarly distinguished stint in the Oregon Legislature.

Corrosive water can cause lead to leach out of ordinary household pipes and plumbing fixtures and into drinking water, so one way to reduce lead exposure across a city is to change the pH of its water by adding chemicals.

The Portland Water Bureau is taking immediate steps to reduce the amount of lead in the water at taps across the Portland metro area.

At the close of 2016, the COBID team will have participated in more than 100 outreach events.

Without fail, the main question we hear from attendees is, “Why should I get certified?” Closely followed by concern that their firm is not in the construction business and, therefore, minimal opportunities exist. In addition, there is the widespread belief that working with the government is cumbersome, difficult, and not worth the effort.

The proposal, which became possible after the 2016 Oregon Legislature lifted the statewide ban on Inclusionary Housing, would require residential developers to include affordable units in multi-family projects with more than 20 units. It includes incentives intended to offset the revenue that would be lost by the lower-priced units.

With concerns that are based on fear, rather than proof, that voter fraud exists in Oregon, a conservative duo is proposing a solution: put a clause in the state constitution that requires all voters to prove they’re U.S. citizens before they can vote.

A Seattle energy consultant accused of forgery in connection with a major Oregon solar power project is seeking to have the charges dismissed, arguing that the state committed prosecutorial misconduct and that the statute of limitations for bringing an indictment had expired.

The state of Oregon is having an extraordinarily difficult time completing a management review of the Oregon Department of Transportation. The latest wrinkle? As things now stand, the New York company hired to do the audit may not look at how well the department avoids conflicts of interest when awarding project contracts.

-Tax measures did what they were supposed to, but there are trade-offs-

Oregon’s public schools receive the bulk of their funding from the state. So when Measure 97 fizzled this fall, school officials who’d been salivating over the prospect of a $3 billion annual boost in state tax revenue were left to contemplate a very different future. Oregon now faces a $1.8 billion budget shortfall for the next biennium. To make matters worse, school districts will wrestle with soaring contributions to the states public pension system. Bend-La Pines pension bill will jump by $4.5 million in 2017.

Oregon’s Department of Fish and Wildlife says it needs money. To that end, a task force is poised to recommend that the 2017 Legislature raise taxes to keep the agency on reasonably sound financial footing.

While ODFW can find ways to spend more money, the proposed surcharges on personal income taxes and beverage containers at the wholesale level are not the best way to provide it. ODFW should not get special tax carve-outs.

Welcome to our national debate such as it is over charter schools, which received a shot in the arm last week after President-elect Donald Trump nominated Michigan charter-school activist Betsy DeVos for secretary of education. In predictably lockstep fashion, DeVos critics warned that charter schools are harming American public education; meanwhile, her champions said charters improve schooling for Americas least privileged kids.

Seniors at Portland’s Cleveland High School were packed into the counseling center on a recent November day. Some were at computers filling out college applications. Others were waiting to hear an admissions officer from Portland State University call out their names.

Feral pigs are a problem in 39 U.S. states and the Northwest is not immune. That’s why officials from four Washington agencies issued a reminder to residents last week to be on the lookout.

So, far this year, there have been only 11 reports of feral pigs in Washington state. That number is up, but Justin Bush said that’s because the states Invasive Species Council is trying to raise awareness. He said if Washington were to become a permanent home for feral pigs, they’d do really well.

A threatened sea bird that relies on coastal old growth forests to nest will be getting further protections in Oregon. This week, the Board of Forestry agreed to join with other state agencies to create a plan to conserve marbled murrelet habitat on state and private lands.

Van Havig, co-owner of Gigantic Brewing Co. on the city’s hipster-heavy east side, has an app on his phone that provides instantly updated currency exchange rates. The company, formed by Havig and Ben Love five years ago, sells 5 to 7 percent of its beer outside the country, primarily to Canada but a bit to Japan, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. The strong U.S. dollar makes Gigantic something of an expensive choice overseas.

There is a gaping hole in Gov. Kate Browns proposed budget, released last Thursday. Browns financial road map for Oregon has nothing to say about the Public Employees Retirement System PERS and its burgeoning costs to local governments and school districts.

To propose a financial plan for Oregon and omit PERS is a bit like offering a battle strategy and leaving out ammunition costs.

The Medford City Council has approved changes to zoning laws allowing the sale of recreational marijuana within city limits.

The council voted unanimously Thursday night with six members in favor to allow permits for Oregon Liquor Control Commission-licensed marijuana dispensaries in commercial areas zoned community commercial, “regional commercial” and “heavy commercial.”

Imagine a giant glowing worm-like creature, some 60 feet long and emitting a bright green-blue. But it’s harmless, and reportedly soft as a boa. Most photos by Tiffany Boothe, Seaside Aquarium.

This is a relative of the truly bizarre and rarely-seen creature that has suddenly washed up along the Oregon coast. It’s called a pyrosome, and the ones found here are less than a foot. They are actually massive colonies of cloned creatures related to a kind of jellyfish called a salp.

Oregon today launched an initiative that will end new HIV infections in the state, building on decades of foundational work to introduce a new five-year plan focused on testing, prevention and treatment.

The initiative, called End HIV Oregon, envisions a state in which all new HIV infections are eliminated and where all people living with HIV have access to high-quality care, free from stigma and discrimination.

A big wind farm proposed for Eastern Oregon now has the permit it needs to go forward from the states Energy Facility Siting Council.

That doesn’t guarantee that the 399-megawatt Saddle Butte project, in both Morrow and Gilliam counties, will be built. Proposed projects, even permitted ones, regularly linger or even vanish, and a wind farm approaching Saddle Butte’s scale hasn’t been completed in Oregon in more than four years.

An audit by the Oregon Secretary of State’s office finds vulnerabilities in the systems of 13 state agencies, but an executive order from the Governor assigns more authority over security to the CIO’s office.

Oregon Secretary of State Jeanne Atkins said she was “taken aback” by the amount of misinformation that surrounded Oregon’s recent election process. In a speech at Salem City Club, Atkins said even her own Facebook friends were sharing bad information.

An Oregon Health Authority representative said submitted waivers are often concluded in the last hours of a presidential administration, adding hope that Oregon may get its giant Medicaid waiver and continue the work of the coordinated care organizations.

The newly elected governors 2017-2019 budget increases the hospital assessment tax and restores an insurance tax to offset a $1 billion reduction in federal funding to Medicaid. Oregon Project Independence would lose funding, and the General Assistance Program for the homeless would end Gov. Kate Brown boldly called on Oregon to cover all children living in Oregon, regardless of immigration status.

A Snake River Correctional Institution inmate found dead in his cell in February is believed to have been killed by another inmate, court records show.

Michael S. Lay, 37, is accused of aggravated murder for the Feb. 25 death of 22-year-old Michael Anthony Teves at the Ontario-based prison, according to an indictment filed Friday in Malheur County Circuit Court.

It’s a debate that has boiled over in recent years in Oregon high school sports: the advantages of the private schools.

I have stupidly allowed myself to get dragged into this discussion, because many want to make it about recruiting. Which is ridiculous, because recruiting is the lifeblood of all private schools. Recruiting is how private schools fill seats in their classrooms.

Oregon education officials laid out their plans late Thursday for how to fight chronic absenteeism, a rampant problem in schools and a prime reason the state has one of the nation’s worst graduation rates.

In a report required by the Legislature, the Oregon Department of Education and Gov. Kate Brown’s Chief Education Office said they would deploy a team of on-the-ground experts to help the 30 percent of schools with sky-high absenteeism do better. They also call for more attention from the top.

The Oregon Health Authority temporarily relaxed marijuana testing rules on Friday in an effort to lower costs for people in the business while still looking out for the public’s welfare. But industry concerns remain that the move isn’t enough to relieve a shortage of marijuana in the legal market.

A report published last week had argued strict policies the state started to enforce in early October were causing tightened supplies and pushing marijuana sales onto the black market.

Americans should get used to a “new normal” of slow economic growth, business economists say.

The median estimate from economists surveyed by the National Association for Business Economics calls for the American economy to grow 2.2 percent in 2017, up from a forecast 1.6 percent this year and unchanged from the previous survey in September.

The elusive weasel-like mammal poked its head out of the wooden crate, glanced around and quickly darted into the thick forest of Mount Rainier National Park returning to a landscape where it had been missing for seven decades.

One by one, 10 Pacific fishers that had been trapped in British Columbia were set free at the park south of Seattle as part of a multiyear effort to reintroduce the native species to its historical range.

A Seattle energy consultant accused of forgery in connection with a major Oregon solar power project is seeking to have the charges dismissed, arguing that the state committed prosecutorial misconduct and that the statute of limitations for bringing an indictment had expired.

Martin Shain was the lead consultant on Oregon’s $24 million Solar by Degree project. Prosecutors say he created a fake invoice from a fictional subcontractor to help secure nearly $12 million in tax credits from the Oregon Department of Energy.

A governor’s budget is a starting point the spending plan for 2017-19 approved by the Legislature about six months from now will differ in major respects from the one Gov. Kate Brown proposed late last week. That’s a good thing, because Brown’s budget contains disappointments that the Legislature should seek to avoid. The bad news is that Brown has made clear that the choices facing Oregon are not easy. More spending for one program will mean less for another.

The proposal, which became possible after the 2016 Oregon Legislature lifted the statewide ban on Inclusionary Housing, would require residential developers to include affordable units in multi-family projects with more than 20 units. It includes incentives intended to offset the revenue that would be lost by the lower-priced units.

With concerns that are based on fear, rather than proof, that voter fraud exists in Oregon, a conservative duo is proposing a solution: put a clause in the state constitution that requires all voters to prove they’re U.S. citizens before they can vote.

Two Republicans have already filed a proposed constitutional amendment well ahead of the 2018 election that would require each of the state’s 2.5 million voters to register again within two years, this time proving to the state they are eligible U.S. citizens using approved government documents.

What’s with a state that’s home to large high-end high-tech firms and yet can’t seem to get things right when state government tries install major high-tech technology. Surely, help can’t be all that far away.

We’re talking, of course, about Oregon and our jumping off point is a finding from the Oregon Secretary of State’s audit division that the 13 state agencies it checked are too vulnerable to hacking. No surprise there, coming in a state where previous hardware-software issues have made it look like the gang that couldn’t shoot straight.

Nearing the end of his two terms, it is apparent that Barrack Obama’s signature initiatives are failing.

His Affordable Care Act is an insolvent disaster. His energy policies are incoherent, ineffectual and ridiculously expensive.

A vast majority of the population appear to fear his confused and dangerous immigration programs. His economic strategies have resulted in the slowest economic recovery witnessed in more than half a century. Inflation-adjusted American household income is significantly less than when Obama took office in 2008.

Housing in Eugene is becoming less and less affordable, even for those who are employed. There is a shortage of reasonably priced housing units in Eugene. This mirrors an escalation in rental rates and cost of buying a home in many cities on the west coast. Portland is one of the cities leading the nation in this housing shortage. Several strategies have been suggested to address the issue. One of the most common is Inclusionary Zoning.

Gov. Kate Brown on Thursday made the first move in a looming, months-long chess game over Oregon’s finances, putting forth a mix of new revenues and “unacceptable” cuts to close a $1.7 billion budget gap normally seen in the throes of a recession.

For decades, the Elliott State Forest has quietly churned out millions of dollars for the Oregon school system. The revenue was generated from the sale of carefully planned timber sales crafted by the Oregon Department of Forestry. All went well until zealots filed lawsuits and protesters blocked roads to halt timber harvesting on the Elliott. Their radical strategy brought timber sales to a virtual halt on some 82,500 acres of prime, tree-growing lands.

Gov. Kate Brown released her 2017-19 spending plan on Thursday, proposing a mix of spending curbs and tax increases including higher taxes on cigarettes, cigars and liquor, and on hospitals to fill a projected $1.7 billion gap between expenses and revenues.

Now that Oregon voters approved giving public universities the authority to invest public funds in the stock market by passing Measure 95 in the November election, the University of Oregon wants to buy into a particular sort, known as derivatives.

Does the Oregon Health Plan have a price on its head? If the incoming administrations pick for Secretary of Health and Human Services is approved, the OHP may have the boot of Rep. Tom Price on its neck. The Georgia congressman has hated Obamacare since the beginning. He may come to Oregon looking for a refund of the $1.9 billion the feds granted the state in 2012.

-Deputy alleges Sheriff Nelson discriminated against her based on gender-

Deschutes County Sheriff Shane Nelson is being investigated for alleged civil rights violations that include discriminating against a female deputy and touching her inappropriately as a way to demean and humiliate her, according to the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries.

Gov. Kate Brown today released her proposed budget that bridges a $1.8 billion budget deficit through a series of tax hikes and by asking lawmakers to give state agencies about $1 billion less than what they say they need to meet rising costs.

Still, the proposal would lead to state spending that at $20.6 billion would be about 9 percent above what lawmakers agreed to spend in the current, two-year budget that ends July 1, 2017.

A good year for U.S. Rep. Greg Walden got better Thursday as Republican colleagues chose him over two other lawmakers vying to chair the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee.

At a time when Republicans control the House, Senate and White House and are looking to dismantle President Obama’s signature health care law, Walden’s appointment would give him the reins controlling the Houses approach to that as well as other efforts.

Ever since President Jimmy Carter created the U.S. Department of Education in 1979, conservatives have been trying to abolish it. Rick Perry, the Texas governor who in a 2011 presidential debate couldn’t remember all the U.S. agencies he wanted to shutter, had total recall over one the Education Department.

Oregon Sen. Sara Gelser and Stand for Children Oregon executive director Toya Fick talk about the future of Measure 98, which would pay for career and technical education in Oregon high schools, but may not receive funding.

Chris Lehman, OPB political reporter based in Salem, gives you the skinny about Gov. Kate Browns new proposed budget.

Breaching four dams on the lower Snake River would cause significant harm to the Pacific Northwest agricultural industry, Idaho wheat industry leaders said Nov. 29 during a public meeting.

The meeting is one of 15 being held around the region by federal agencies to get input on the operation of the hydropower dams on the Columbia-Snake River system, a process initiated by a federal judge handling a lawsuit brought by dam removal supporters.

Following Judge Michael Simon’s recent decision to require a full review of the Columbia and Snake River systems, there has been a movement to re-evaluate what our dams mean to Eastern Washington.

Here in our region, the four lower Snake River dams provide renewable, reliable, affordable energy and act as a superhighway for barges to transport goods. As a community, we need to let our federal partners know that we want to continue to invest in and improve our dams.

Gov. Kate Brown Thursday proposed a 2017-19 budget that cuts spending across most areas in state government, while keeping whole K-12 education and programs assisting low-income students with college tuition.

The $20.8 billion budget plan uses a potpourri of cuts and tax increases to fill in a $1.7 billion state revenue hole, caused largely by increases in negotiated salaries and benefits and a loss of federal funding for subsidizing health insurance for low-income residents.

Gov. Kate Brown says her budget proposal, released Thursday, contains cuts she finds “absolutely unacceptable.” She also calls her plan “a short-term solution, nothing more.” Unfortunately, that’s been this state’s approach for far too long: patch the leaks, tax the usual victims just enough to limp through another biennium, but never address the underlying problems.

Gov. Kate Brown released her proposed budget for 2017-19 on Thursday. The budget, which is just the first word in a discussion that will last until the end of next year’s legislative session, calls for a variety of program cuts and additional taxes to help cover what’s now estimated as a state budget shortfall of $1.7 billion.

New marijuana testing regulations may be hurting the profitability of Oregon’s young pot industry, with some marijuana businesses considering closing their doors because of strained supplies, according to a new report.

A lawyer who became a politician in the state Legislature in his 30s, Myers was then elected state attorney general three times. He’ll be remembered for the settlement with big tobacco, which is still yielding the state millions of dollars in annual payments.

Its not uncommon for physician assistant Sharon DeHart to get a child in her office who appears to have symptoms of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder not focusing at school, behavioral issues at home, lack of friends but she isnt sure about the diagnosis.

Over the past two decades, U.S. hospitals have been moving steadily toward establishing smoke-free campuses in a bid to promote healthier lifestyles among their patients and their staff. But the movement has had a secondary benefit a reduction in the number of hospital fires.

More than 70 percent of students from Bend-La Pines class of 2016 reported they planned to attend college or a trade school.

Of the more than 1,100 seniors in the school districts 2016 graduating class, more than 800 planned to continue their education after high school, according to data the school district recently released. While a majority decided on a school in Oregon, many others went to schools across the nation and abroad.

It took Chris Abbott six stressful months to find a new space for his growing company. The 10,000-square-foot warehouse on the outskirts of Portland was once used to store industrial-strength compressors. Now the gritty space, its cinder walls repainted white, resembles a cross between a high-end laboratory and an industrial bakery. Its the home of Botanica, Abbotts edible marijuana company.

Oregon lawmakers will head to Salem early next year with a major problem before them. The states financial needs for 2017-19 are expected to exceed its revenue by at least $1.4 billion. They’ll have to make cuts, raise taxes or some combination of both to balance the budget, as the state constitution requires.

We speak to Albany Mayor Sharon Konopa and Oregon ACLU attorney Kelly Simon about a new ordinance passed by Albany city council that makes it illegal to hand money from a car to someone panhandling on the side of the road.

Legislators were unable to agree on a transportation funding package in 2015. Will they be able to work something out in the next session? Republican representative Cliff Bentz and Democrat Caddy McKeown join us to discuss what Oregon’s transportation needs are, and how they will be funded.

Agriculture is gearing up to fend off continued attacks on crop insurance in Congress as negotiations over a new farm bill begin.

I don’t think there’s any doubt that crop insurance is going to have a target on its back, said Tara Smith, vice president of federal affairs for the Crop Insurance and Reinsurance Bureau, which is a liaison between member companies and regulatory agencies.

Small dam removal projects in Oregon, Washington and California are receiving money from a new fund set up by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation for dam removal and river restoration in the West.

The foundation, based in Menlo Park, Calif., marked its 50th anniversary on Nov. 29 by announcing a $50 million grant to the Resources Legacy Fund to establish the new Open Rivers Fund.

Truitt Family Foods, a Salem, Ore., processing company, recently spread the word it is looking for subcontractors who can provide ingredients it uses to make hummus and vegetable dips.

On the surface its a fairly routine development; a processor looking for suppliers of garbanzo bean puree, sesame seed paste, lime and lemon juice concentrate, garlic powder and puree, and sugar and salt.

Idaho officials say online sales of hunting and fishing licenses are up and running again following a three-month shutdown due to a computer breach at the vendor that handles those sales.

Idaho Fish and Game announced Tuesday that more security features have been added that will require additional steps by those seeking to make purchases online.
OSL Ed. Note: Story refers to Oregon breach. Oregon uses same vendor.

A national livestock industry leader warns proposed changes to the Bureau of Land Management planning process are on the fast track for implementation and threaten public lands grazing.

Ethan Lane, executive director of the Public Lands Council, which represents cattle and sheep ranchers with public lands grazing permits, said senior BLM officials have assured him a final version of the agency’s proposed Planning 2.0 will be released before the current administration leaves office.

It may sound far-fetched that 1,364 students in the Medford School District are homeless, but it is reality. And the number of homeless students is growing. Thanks to the efforts of the Maslow Project, those students are getting help with basic necessities and with schoolwork, but the need for affordable housing continues.

Lake County found itself in the dark once again Monday night, void of internet service following complications with a fiber optic line maintained by Centurylink. The outage continued into Tuesday afternoon, leaving many clientele without service in the latest of what has been months of repeated outages and delays on a planned path for vast broadband upgrades in rural southern Oregon.

On Monday, Clatsop County received something it has been expecting for weeks: formal notice of a $1.4 billion class action lawsuit that includes 15 counties and dozens of local taxing districts.

By late January, the Board of Commissioners will need to decide whether or not to remain involved in a legal clash that could bring millions of dollars to the county or could, as some fear, dangerously increase harvest on county forestland and hand over control of these lands to the private timber industry.

Last weeks visit by the Oregon Parks and Recreation Commission to some of Cannon Beach’s many attractions was a valuable reminder for commissioners and residents alike of the North Coasts attractions and the need to protect them in light of 21st century challenges.

The accessibility of Clatsop beaches and other assets was a motif of the meeting.

Katie Lantz-Phillips owns Potion Bath, which makes soaps and lotions, so she sometimes has about 10 artisan soap bars at her testing laboratory.

And that lab, much to her husbands chagrin, doubles as her home shower. Lantz-Phillips creates her bath products at her house north of Corvallis, then sells them online or at bazaars to help support her family.

Dozens of people assembled last month in Lebanon for the unveiling of a long-term economic development plan for Linn County, and you couldn’t have blamed any of the participants for coming away with this conclusion:

The beer industry is transforming before our eyes. Start-ups are booming and driving growth, particularly here in Oregon. However, craft beer overall is slowing and macros are declining outright. What does the outlook hold for Oregon breweries and what growth opportunities remain?

Please contact the State Library of access to this premium story from the Lund Report. library.help@state.or.us , 503-378-8800

Patients of Grants Pass-based AllCare Health, one of Oregons 16 Medicaid-funded coordinated care organizations, are demographically different: they are more likely to be men, less likely to hold a post-graduate degree, and whiter than CCO members as a whole, across the stat.

The number of Latino and multi-racial students at Oregon’s public universities is more than double what it was seven years ago, according to an analysis of enrollment records by The Oregonian/OregonLive.

Oregon has stopped housing foster children in juvenile detention facilities and hospitals and will limit placements in hotels, under an interim settlement agreement with children’s advocates released on Tuesday.

Four powerful sportfishing groups have asked Oregon Gov. Kate Brown to keep the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission from significantly altering a plan to move gill-nets from the lower Columbia River in 2017.

The Oregon Department of Human Services has agreed not to house foster children in hotels or its offices unless it is an emergency, according to a settlement reached between the agency and lawyers representing foster children.

The U.S. Forest Service set fire to the Black Butte Lookout ground house on Tuesday, Nov. 29, eliminating a non-historic structure that often showed up in pictures of the popular hiking destination near Sisters.

Respectfully, it is disappointing to see Shawn Donnille spreading fear about pesticides on the opinion pages of The Register-Guard once again guest viewpoint, Nov. 21. Donnille is entitled to his opinion, but he should know the facts. Oregons regulation of and restrictions on the use of pesticides across the state are founded on scientific data and research, public health protection and practical application.

-Big parcels currently in the county would go through the new process-

If no one appeals the city of Bends recently approved plan to expand its boundaries within the next week, some Deschutes County property owners can start submitting proposals to develop their properties.

But the process for planning large developments could change because the city is looking to clarify planning rules for residential, industrial and commercial developments. This comes after the state recently approved the city’s plan to take over 2,380 acres of land in the county, as well as set rules for what can be built in areas that are currently rural.

The U.S. Congress this week passed bipartisan legislation meant to garner more data on the economic impact of outdoor recreation across the country.

U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., co-sponsored the legislation that passed the Senate on Monday. A version of it passed the House of Representatives earlier this month. It now awaits the presidents signature. The outdoor industry expects President Barack Obama to sign it into law before the end of the year.

As local nonprofits and other organizations work on the complicated task of finding housing for Central Oregon’s homeless population, others have undertaken a more straightforward assignment preventing people from losing their homes in the first place.

Ag industry representatives say they’re as ready as possible for an upcoming 14-week closure of the Columbia/Snake river system that carries their goods overseas.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is closing the river from Dec. 12 through March 20. The extended closure allows the corps to make repairs at six dams on the river system, including navlock controls at Bonneville Lock and Dam and new operating machinery for the downstream gate at Ice Harbor Lock and Dam. Information from the corps includes repairs costing at least $33 million.

The number of homeless students is at an all-time high across the state, with Jackson County ranking second with 2,452 students, according to data released by the Oregon Department of Education.

The homeless rates in the Medford, Phoenix-Talent, Eagle Point, Rogue River and Butte Falls school districts have increased since 2014-15. And Butte Falls currently has the highest percentage 35.62 of homeless students in the state.

The North Bend Police Department has adopted a new program to help juvenile offenders, one that also gives power back to the victims.

Chief Robert Kappelman first heard of restorative justice when he was still working for his old department in Wisconsin, where troubled youth had no place to go. The juvenile detention center had closed, so his department was forced to find an alternative method, and rightly so, because locking kids up is not the best way to change future behavior and we know that, Kappelman said.

Two Cape Arago Highway State Parks are reopened after park rangers evacuated them due to flooding last week.

Shore Acres State Park was back in business Saturday, after its popular holiday lights display was cancelled the prior evening. Visitors reveling at the large waves crashing against the rocky cliffs at the park were evacuated Friday afternoon due to concerns of high tide flooding.

Gov. Kate Brown pledged to increase transparency and accountability in Oregon state government after she took office in early 2015 following John Kitzhabers resignation under a cloud of ethics challenges related to alleged influence peddling.

The fact of the matter is that little ethics reform has been accomplished during the nearly two years since Brown became governor. Legislators on both sides of the aisle have introduced several ethics reform bills.

Oregonians will get the answer to that question on Thursday when Gov. Kate Brown is scheduled to unveil her proposed balanced budget for the state. The budget for the next biennium comes amid a predicted $1.4 billion deficit. While the governor hasnt publicly detailed it, she has strongly hinted the spending plan will contain deep cuts for state agencies and services to make up the gap, which has been a long time in the making.

Federal law does not preempt state or local governments from banning genetically engineered crops that have been deregulated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed an earlier ruling that held Maui County in Hawaii was prohibited from banning commercialized genetically modified organisms in 2014 because the ordinance was preempted by federal rules for biotechnology.

The Southern Poverty Law Center on Tuesday released a report about the surge of “hate incidents” in the wake of the Nov. 8 election of Donald Trump.

Using media reports and the organization’s own complaint system, the SPLC tallied 867 “hate incidents” in the 10 days after the election. To be counted, the incidents had to take place in the real world (i.e. not on social media).

In eight months on the job as executive director of the Oregon Educators Benefits Board, James Raussen allegedly accepted a handful of spendy meals and, on one occasion, tickets to a Blazers game courtesy of insurers and consulting firms.

Comcast has extended a seven-year tax fight worth as much as $170 million to Oregon schools and local governments, asking the state’s tax court to reduce its liability under an obscure application of tax law.

The official who ran the Oregon Educators Benefit Board until his resignation this month had conflicts of interest with insurers seeking contracts with the state, used state resources for personal purposes, was dishonest and had poor leadership, according to investigation documents released by the Oregon Health Authority.

The city of Salem released more than 22 million gallons of diluted raw sewage into the Willamette River on Thanksgiving afternoon and the following morning after heavy rain overwhelmed its sewer system.

Oregon’s budgetary roller coaster is climbing, with economic growth and one of the nations healthiest job-creation rates providing record revenues to the state. Yet legislators preparing for the 2017 session that begins in January are speaking of tapping reserve funds that were created for times when the roller coaster plunges downward. Such talk is an unmistakable sign of budgetary unsustainability.

On the Spokane Indian Reservation in Eastern Washington, about 40 public school teachers gathered recently in a field of reeds that stretched as high as their heads.

Before harvesting the reeds, or tules, to make mats, they prayed. Later, they left tobacco as a gift. By learning the rituals of the Spokane tribe, the teachers of the Wellpinit School District hope to connect the culture to their lessons to better engage their students almost all of whom are indigenous.

When it comes to providing access to public records in Oregon, governments are supposed to keep the public part uppermost in mind. Central Oregon Community College doesn’t see things quite that way.

COCC recently completed a $2 million solar project on its Redmond campus. Sunlight, ironically, didn’t penetrate the language of two contracts the college signed to build the arrays. They put secrecy before public transparency.

In 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court limited the power of unions to coerce public workers to pay dues.

The decision specifically concerned home health care workers in Illinois. They are similar to home health care workers in Oregon. They are not full-fledged public employees because they are employed by individuals. They are paid in part by the state.

Deschutes County 911 is preparing to launch two new upgrades to help provide better public safety services.

All public safety entities in the county will move to a new radio system that will allow for better communication. That transition will take about a year to be fully implemented. More immediately, the emergency dispatch center will be able to receive text messages.

State officials did such a good job with the launch of Cover Oregon, the $300 million health care exchange that sank at the dock, that we understand why they dont want to tell anyone whats going on now.

Leading up to the scheduled launch of Cover Oregon in 2013, state officials assured the public there was nothing to worry about. The health insurance website would work

But then, surprise The thing didn’t work after all. Notwithstanding the states assurances, people who wanted to obtain coverage through the site couldn’t.

The Boise-based regional biologist for Ducks Unlimited is part of a movement that recognizes the wildlife and water-supply benefits of flood irrigation, and the need to make certain it continues to be used in floodplains and other strategic locations across the West.

Poisoning by plants can result in serious economic losses to livestock producers in the western United States.

The Poisonous Plant Research Laboratory PPRL has continued to develop better understanding of how certain plants become toxic to animals and how livestock managers can take action to minimize the impact on their livestock.

She remembers playing in a dirt pile in her backyard while growing up in California.

At one point my mom realized she had no spoons left in the house because I was constantly taking her spoons and any digging implements I could find, she said. I would dig these giant holes, look at the soil, add water to see what would happen. Early on, I guess I was fascinated by soil.

The explosion shook the ground beneath the Umatilla Indian Reservation and unleashed a massive fireball that roared up to 500 feet into the air.

On Jan. 2, 1999, a natural gas pipeline ruptured about a mile south of Cayuse at the base of the Blue Mountains, triggering the blast that left behind a large crater and sent shrapnel flying hundreds of feet.

The Department of Interior recently released its Integrated Rangeland Fire Management Strategy whose goal is to reduce range fires in sagebrush ecosystems critical to sage grouse.

The plan correctly identifies that cheatgrass, a highly flammable exotic annual, is a major threat to the bird, as well as the sagebrush ecosystems. However, the plan failed to acknowledge that livestock grazing is the major factor facilitating the spread of cheatgrass and targeted grazing as a fire prevention solution is a delusion for reasons Ill discuss below.

Though the path of a proposed power lines project has not been set in stone, a decision will be made soon. The outcome could impact some of Malheur Countys agriculture activities, including aerial spraying and irrigation, which could in turn affect water rights.

Bureau of Land Management Vale District officials on Friday released the final environmental impact statement for the proposed Boardman to Hemingway transmission line project.

A program that teamed up three universities and three agricultural commissions in 1984 has recently experienced its fourth great success with a newly bred potato that seems to be superior in numerous ways to the old gold standard.

The Northwest Potato Variety Development Program which includes researchers from Washington State University, the University of Idaho, Oregon State University and the U.S. Department of Agricultures Agricultural Research Service has introduced about 45 varieties since its inception, including four since 2000 that have rocketed to stardom or its closest equivalent in the potato world as McDonalds french fries.

Q: Seeing plenty of fencing going up in the I-5 median out toward Ashland. I assume it’s to prevent U-turns by freeway drivers. Is that the case? How long is this fence line going to be, and how much does it cost?

A: Oregon Department of Transportation officials say the cable rail installation is a small part of a $5.9 million I-5 paving project. The paving portion included I-5 stretches and ramps, except for Exit 24. The cable rail, included in the second half of the project, will be installed between mileposts 11 and 27.

The terrain around Wally McCahon’s home has a strong potential for wildfire.

“This is a tinder box,” McCahon says of the landscape near his home off Rolling Hills Drive outside Eagle Point. “Just nothing but buckbrush, poison oak, manzanita, poison oak. A lot of poison oak. And a lot of it has grown very close to the road.”

Q: While visiting the New Hampshire capitol recently, we had a chance to visit with their secretary of state, Bill Garner. Oh, so you are from Oregon,” he said. “Remember your secretary of state, Phil Keisling? Well, he tried to talk New Hampshire into switching over to vote by mail. We are so glad we did not. Oregon’s vote participation has plummeted since the switch to mail-in ballots. Is Mr. Garner correct? Are Oregon voters voting less under the vote-by-mail system?

A: After digging into recent voting records, we also looked into whether New Hampshire has recently legalized marijuana, because we wondered what Mr. Garner had been smoking….

Tonight the National Park Service will host a public meeting in Klamath Falls on the future of the Tule Lake Unit during the second in a three-week series of 11 public meetings on on plans for the former World War II segregation center site.

Customers cant get enough of Cambrias quartz countertops, and the million-square-foot production facility here is racing to keep up. Under bright lights and high ceilings, churning machinery fuses quartz crystals into heavy slabs and polishes them until they shine.

State parks staff and seven parks commissioners met in Cannon Beach to discuss state lands, forestry projects, the upcoming 50th anniversary of the Beach Bill and more at the Oregon Parks and Recreation Commissions mid-November meeting.

Longtime Cannon Beach resident Robin Risley is the west of the Coast Range commissioner. With her term ending in March, she said it has been a joy serving on the commission.

-Installed This Summer Along Interstate 84 Between Baker City and Ladd Canyon-

The new variable speed limit signs on Interstate 84 had their first chance to shine on Monday as dense fog cloaked sections of the freeway near Baker City.

The signs fizzled.

Sensors within at least one sign failed to recognize that fog had reduced the visibility below one-tenth of a mile, at which point the sign is supposed to reduce the posted speed limit from the usual 70 mph for passenger cars.

We would be amused by the schoolyard antics of the mayors of some sanctuary cities, including Portland and Eugene, except the potential results of their pre-adolescent stubbornness could be fatal for some of their own innocent constituents.

The U.S. Board on Geographic Names denied Grant County’s most recent request to change names of two geographic features formerly known as Squaw Creek and Squaw Meadow.

In a Nov. 1 letter to County Judge Scott Myers and Commissioners Chris Labhart and Boyd Britton, U.S. Board on Geographic Names Executive Secretary Lou Yost said the board had already changed the names for the creek and meadow near U.S. Highway 26 near the Grant-Baker county line to Wiwaanaytt Creek and Wiwaanaytt Meadow at a meeting April 14.

Oregon Department of Transportation has found a light at the end of the tunnel in its endeavor to fully restore the Historic Columbia River Highway as a single trail.

The Federal Lands Access Program in early November awarded ODOT a $28 million grant to complete a crossing at Mitchell Point, a rocky cape west of Hood River, which has been an expensive hurdle in the project.

About 500,000 acres could be preserved as wilderness if the proposed Crater Lake Wilderness becomes reality.

Creating a new wilderness area requires an act of Congress, and no new legislation has been drafted to make that happen, yet. Wilderness advocates said U.S. Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley and U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Portland, have expressed interest. Representatives of the Crater Lake Wilderness campaign handed 37,000 signatures from supporters to Wyden this week.

There’s not a whole bunch to talk about in the world of fishing. A few steelhead are getting caught but no real numbers yet. Some nice salmon on the Elk and Sixes are being caught when the water levels are right and some perch and rockfish are being caught here locally in Coos Bay.

Oh, I almost forgot that the surf perch fishing is pretty good but not on big ocean swell days.

Josephine County commissioners Tuesday rejected putting a law enforcement levy on the May ballot. That could lead to Josephine County’s jail closing in 2017. If so, Josephine officials shouldn’t look north to Douglas County to house their inmates, said Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin.

Rickety plyboard patios, threadbare awnings, chain-link fences and metal signs surround the ramshackle trailers at Junction Mobile Park in Winston. Knock on a door and someone will yell out, but no one will answer.

Residents here have settled into their spaces over the years. They have built gardens and walls and fences bordering their small homes, protecting them from a world that has deemed them a collection of old junkers, as one man put it.

The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife on Wednesday issued an investigation report confirming a wolf attack on an 8-month-old calf on private land in the Crow Creek area northeast of Enterprise in Wallowa County.

While homelessness across the nation continues to decline, Oregon has the highest percentage of homeless families with children not living in a shelter, according to the latest national estimate by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development HUD.

The terrain near Coos Bay, in Oregon’s Coast Range, is steeply sloped, densely forested, and abundant in fish-bearing rivers and other wildlife. An 82,500-acre patch of it constitutes the Elliott State Forest, created on consolidated lands transferred to Oregon by the federal government with the mandate its riches be turned to money so children could go to school and build a life.

Oregon environmental regulators hit McMenamins Inc. with a $62,553 fine for illegally dumping spent grain, hops and other byproducts from its distillery, brewery and winery operation in Troutdale into nearby creeks.

The state Department of Environmental Quality also said the food, lodging and entertainment giant has run its Edgefield location without an industrial wastewater permit since 1998.

More than 4 million people call Oregon home, and we all have a great deal for which to be thankful this holiday season. Our remarkable state holds a pioneering history, breathtaking natural beauty and an engaged citizenry from endlessly diverse cultures and identities.

Come January, Democratic women will make up the majority of the controlling party in Oregon’s House for the first time. And, as reported by The Oregonian/OregonLive’s Hillary Borrud, women also will make up the majority of House Democrats’ new leadership team.

Oregon’s upstart Independent Party felt confident 2016 would be the election cycle that cemented its status in the state as a viable third party.

Late last year, party Secretary Sal Peralta told The Oregonian/OregonLive the party’s goal was to control a few seats in the Legislature and “prevent either the Democrats or Republicans from reaching a majority.” The Independent Party of Oregon even discussed the possibility of having its own office in the Capitol.

Elevated carbon dioxide levels in the Pacific Ocean are connected to human activity, according to a study from the federal government, and that acidification is causing the shells of a key microscopic sea snail to dissolve, a phenomenon that could affect other species in the ecosystem.

Research from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released Tuesday linked elevated human-caused carbon dioxide levels along the waters off the West Coast to “shell dissolution” among the microscopic sea snail known as pteropods.

Our decision to declare Portland State University a sanctuary campus has been met with broad support from our students and the community. But it also raises some questions and concerns about what it means and how it might affect our relationship with the federal government. Let me explain our decision and its implications.

In the last 20 years, one of the country’s most valuable natural resources has transformed from a national disaster to a great American recovery story. But unless you’re a fishery scientist or a fisherman who suffered through the near collapse of a fishery, you’ve probably never heard the story.

The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality has fined McMenamins Inc. $62,553 for discharging wastewater without a permit from a distillery, winery and brewery at its Edgefield property to nearby creeks that drain to the Columbia River.

Regarding the presidency of these United States, ours is a Republic based not upon the popular vote, but upon the voiced support of the majority of the country. The citizenry of our state would actually benefit from a similar form of electing our governor.

Gov. Kate Brown has nominated Marion County Commissioner Janet Carlson for a spot on the Oregon State Hospital Advisory Board, the public body that advises the Legislature and Oregon Health Authority officials on the Salem psychiatric facility.

Nothing on Earth is bigger than the Pacific Ocean and with size comes power, unpredictability and danger. The Portland Oregonian recently reported a timely warning from the U.S. Coast Guard that visitors to the Oregon Coast should be wary of sneaker waves this time of year. That’s good advice in any season, and sudden surges of ocean water are not the only hazards that must be borne in mind.

Flood damages nationwide total more than $8 billion a year. While some see a flood as an act of God, the real problem is that we’ve built so many houses and commercial buildings in harms way on floodplains prone to high water.

Job titles in academic administration sometimes obscure more than they reveal, so its hard to guess exactly what state Sen. Chris Edwards will be doing in his new job as assistant vice president for strategic initiatives at the University of Oregon.

That’s probably the best piece of advice when it comes to surviving sneaker waves the sudden, unpredictable surges of water that can knock you over or pull you out to sea. And while there’s no official season for sneaker waves, plotting out major incidents in Oregon shows an undeniable seasonal trend.

There’s a movement afoot to change it, but Oregon has a nearly 30-year-old law that forbids local and state police from investigating federal immigration violations.

Somehow, people have this fear that local police are going to jump on the bandwagon and help enforce immigration law, Lane County Sheriff Byron Trapp said. But its really a nonissue. There are no changes at the local level.

President-elect Donald Trump wont take office until January, but legal circles are already buzzing with speculation about who will take on the powerful appointed position of Oregon’s top federal prosecutor.

Local governments in Central Oregon have banded together ahead of the 2017 legislative session in support of a proposal that some say could lead to improved mass transit in the region.

The proposal would give the Central Oregon Intergovernmental Council, which operates transit service in the tri-county region, new authority to ask cities and voters to raise property taxes to beef up transit. State law doesn’t allow such an arrangement.

The Columbia River Gorge is famous for sweeping dramatic vistas, but new research published by the U.S. Geological Survey reveals a shifting landscape beneath the forest.

Three researchers with USGS mapped a history of 215 different landslides across 64 percent of a 86-square-mile area between Prindle and Carson in Skamania County, Washington, just north of the Mt. Hood National Forest.

It could be only a matter of weeks before developers can submit plans to the city to redevelop parts of Bend something that could dramatically change the way the city looks in the future.

Last week, the state approved the city’s plan to expand onto county land and allow for more than 17,000 new homes. But the plan only allows for Bend to take over 2,380 acres, which means development wont just expand outward it’ll have to go up.

It sounds like a big fish story: a plan to create a biodiversity map identifying thousands of aquatic species in every river and stream in the western U.S.

But scientists say they’re steadily reeling in that whopper and by next summer will have the first Aquatic Environmental DNA Atlas available for the public.

Boise-based U.S. Forest Service fisheries biologist Dan Isaak is leading the project and says such a map could help with land management decisions and deciding where to spend limited money and resources.

As the recovery from the Great Recession continues, job growth is solid and the labor force is growing at close to its fastest pace since 2000 because more unemployed workers are coming off the sidelines.

Still, the percentage of working-age Americans in the labor force remains stuck near its lowest level since the late 1970s. Although retiring baby boomers are the main reason, there’s another troubling factor that experts predict wont be solved by stronger economic growth.

When Jared Rutledge called his mortgage broker one morning last week after putting in an offer on a home in Glendale, Arizona, just west of Phoenix, he discovered that the 3.8 percent rate he had been quoted a couple of months ago had already gone up to 4.125 percent. That afternoon, it had inched up to 4.25, and by evening, when he finally called back to finalize the deal, it was 4.375 percent.

Oregon saw the second-highest increase in home prices in the nation over the past 12 months, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

For the year ending in the third quarter, home prices in Oregon rose by 10.4 percent, second only to Florida’s 10.7 percent increase over the same period. Nationally, the rate was 6.1 percent over that period, the highest level of appreciation since 2013, according to the agency.

Oregon’s recently settled lawsuit over its failed $300 million health insurance website marked the end of a long chapter that embarrassed the states top political leaders, but the state isn’t out of the woods with Cover Oregon yet.

Deschutes County might get a fifth solar farm next year if a Virginia company’s plan for a 90-acre facility east of Bend is approved.

The project, which Charlottesville-based Bear Creek Solar Center LLC submitted planning permit applications for this month, is still under consideration by the county. The county’s planning division will accept written comments on the proposal until Dec. 2. If necessary, a public hearing will take place in the next three to four months.

There’s a right way for wilderness proponents to restrict the use of huge swaths of public land, and there’s a wrong way. The right way is to go through a public process and to get a bill through Congress and signed by the president. The wrong way is to skip Congress and meaningful public debate and have a president create a national monument.

Gov. Kate Brown and the Democratic legislative leadership have been looking the other way while others have fashioned proposals to address the states public pension crisis.

It was never a wise position. But now that Measure 97s disastrous tax proposal has been soundly defeated, Brown and other leaders need to face reality, even if doing so means upsetting their union supporters.

Oregon has made progress in curbing inappropriate antibiotic use, but too many doctors still prescribe antibiotics when they are ineffective or choose more broadly acting antibiotics when a more targeted medication will do.

A report issued by the Oregon Health Authority last week found that prescriptions for oral antibiotics in doctors offices and outpatient clinics dropped 29 percent since 2008, including an 8 percent drop from 2014 to 2015.

As we recover from a day of feasting, let’s pause and consider this news: During the three-year period of 2013-15, Oregon led the nation in the increase in food insecurity, with nearly one in six households not certain it would be able to put food on the table.

While metro Oregon has seen a great recovery from the Great Recession, that’s not necessarily true in rural Oregon.

Linn County Circuit Court Judge Daniel Murphy will rule before the end of the year on a motion to dismiss a lawsuit challenging the state’s paid sick-leave law.

Murphy made the announcement at the end of a Wednesday hearing into the lawsuit, filed by Linn County and eight other counties. The counties are arguing that the law represents an unfunded mandate and therefore is unconstitutional.

Legislative support is showing up for an extension, in some form, of the sunsetting Residential Energy Tax Credit, a top priority of the Oregon solar energy industry.

A set of draft recommendations put out by the Joint Interim Committee on Department of Energy Oversight recently included a call to continue RETC, due to end on Jan. 1, 2018, for two years or until a replacement program is adopted.

Over the lunch hour I will be on OPBs Think Out Loud discussing Oregons economy that is currently at fullish employment. Recently we have highlighted that the state now has neither an unemployment nor underemployment gap. What remains is the participation gap.

First, however, lets talk a little about full employment. Unfortunately there are a few different definitions and no specific data series that magically says when an economy is at full employment.

-Fall injuries among older adults cost Medicare almost as much as cancer treatment last year.-

Falls are the leading cause of injury and injury-related deaths among older adults and cost more than $30 billion a year in medical charges.

A recent report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention CDC found that nationally just over 10 percent of older Americans reported an injury from a fall in the past year. The report tracked falls and fall injuries for adults age 65 and over in each state, discovering sizable variation across different regions of the country.

A massive earthquake, a toxic chemical spill, a huge forest fire. If a disaster strikes the McKenzie River, it strikes Eugene’s sole source of drinking water. There is also the possibility of a malevolent attack on the water system, EWEB says.

-Increased investment has begun in Portland with a newly announced health and housing alliance-

In a report released in late October, Oregon Health Authority examined the role of housing as a social determinant of health.

The report, which surveyed 15 of the states 16 coordinated care organizations, or CCOs, showed CCOs offer a variety of housing-related services and have an eagerness to invest and expand upon what already exists.